


never seen a face like yours

by sungods



Series: sw sequel trilogy [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, M/M, No Beta We Die Like Clones, Pining, Post-Canon, Post-TRoS, and jess has trust issues so, ok gonna make it SUPER FUCKING CLEAR i hate reylo i hate kylo ren, so much pining, theres that, uh rey has ptsd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:00:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24876574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sungods/pseuds/sungods
Summary: “Night, Jess,” Rey whispers into the dark.As she’s drifting off, she realises that today was the first time she’s ever heard Jess laugh. It’s a beautiful sound, and her last thought before sleep is that she’d like to hear it again, and again, and again.
Relationships: Jessika Pava/Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn
Series: sw sequel trilogy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1800052
Comments: 29
Kudos: 67





	1. chapter one

**Author's Note:**

> I just want to let you know  
> I’m seeing the sides that you don't show  
> \- North, Clairo

She dreams about him, sometimes.

It’s not always bad at first. Sometimes she’s sitting in a field she’s never seen before, wearing a dress she’d never wear in a million years. And he’s there too, looking happier than she’s ever seen him, wearing clothes she doesn’t recognise. He offers her a flower. Then the dream folds in on itself and she wakes up screaming.

Ben Solo, Kylo Ren, and her, something dark and twisted binding them all together, until Palpatine cut it clean and left her alone, with a dead man in her arms, before that faded away too.

(Here is the thing- when Rey looks back to when air rushed back in her lungs, when her fingers regained their feeling, when she came back to _life_ \- she doesn’t remember where she ended and Ben began. She’d kissed him, she remembered that much, but was it her or was it him?)

She wishes she’d never left Jakku.

No, that’s a lie. She’s grateful for everything she’s learnt, all the people she’s met. But the dark, disgusting place in her that remembers Ben Solo is still there, and she doesn’t know if it’ll ever go away. 

She’s grateful for her life. Grateful for him bringing her back. 

But she remembers the red lines in the sky above Takodana. She remembers watching Leia’s face crumple, as she was told the news. Not just a planet, this time, but a whole system of souls, wiped from the galaxy in one strike. 

She remembers the sound Chewie made as Kylo Ren’s lightsaber tore through Han. She remembers the shock, the horror, of seeing this _legend_ , this hero she’d heard so many stories about, who’d offered her a job and a chance, fall. Crumple, and vanish into the abyss.

Because of his dark, burning son.

She, better than anyone else alive, knew the pull of the dark side. It had wrapped a hand around her throat and whispered, _I will make you strong. No one will ever hurt you again._ For a real moment, her resolve had faltered. It would have been so easy to fall.

But she hadn’t, and that was the difference between her and Ben. Even though he’d clawed his way back to the Light, he’d still fallen first, and dragged millions of souls screaming into the dark with him. It was justice, really, that he’d died.

Did she forgive him? Could she forget him?

She doesn’t know. She wished she did.

She’s tired of the unknown.

##### -

She walks, after training with Finn, walks circles in the grass or sand or snow on whatever planet they find themselves on. It’s a new form of meditating. Sitting still doesn’t help her anymore, her mind churning, the stillness pressing down on her from all sides. It feels like being on the Finaliser.

So, she walks.

Sometimes Finn watches her, concern in his face. He wants to ask, and she can’t tell him. What right does she have to complain to Finn? He’d had his entire life stripped away from him, his family, any semblance of a normal childhood, because of the man who now dwelled in Rey’s mind. He’s the most forgiving person she knows, but she can see the fury in his eyes when they visit the shattered villages, listens to the stories of children ripped away, visits graves of people who will never be remembered when history is recorded for the future. Cut down by cruelty and a dark line of fire in the night.

He would try to understand, but he wouldn’t, and she doesn’t want to burden him with the questions piling up inside her brain. 

Kylo Ren was a monster.

Ben Solo saved her life.

Rey is getting tired of the discordance of her mind.

##### -

She first notices the pilot on Bespin.

Jessika Pava, a friend of Poe’s, one of the few former Black Squadron members escorting them around the galaxy. They talk, occasionally, with the careful politeness of people not well acquainted, about rations and plans and the next destination. Jess is sharper than Poe with a quicker, drier sense of humour. She does not smile easily and flies with no astromech, and she watches Rey while she walks in her well-worn circles.

It’s easy to ignore until the third time it happens, on a different planet light years away.

“Why do you walk?”

Rey looks up from the sand. Jess is strewn over a pile of crates, lazy as a cat in the sun. She’s still wearing her pilot orange and her black hair is tied in a messy bun. There is grease on her clever fingers and rumpled clothes and she doesn’t seem to care. The skin on Rey’s arms prickles in awareness.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, why do you walk? You’re going nowhere.”

Rey carefully sinks to the ground, crossing her legs underneath her. “It’s a calming technique. Like meditation.”

“I’ve seen Finn meditate. He just sits and closes his eyes.”

“I’m not Finn.”

“Obviously. You’re a Jedi and he’s not.” The pilot seems a little bit unsure of what to say now, chewing on her bottom lip. Rey can sense the shape of her thoughts, and they’re a wild mix of embarrassment, reverence, hesitation. None of it shows on Pava’s face. It’s like a mask. Rey pushes her mind away. She has no right to look underneath.

“It’s just my way of doing it.”

A pause. Neither of them had really expected this conversation to happen. The air crackles like it did on Ahch-To, before the violent storms that would soak Rey to the bone.

“D’you wanna play sabacc?”

##### -

Sabacc is surprisingly hard to learn, and she’s still sitting with Jess under the shadow of her X-wing when Finn comes back from the village they’d come to visit, where he’d been asking about children taken many years ago. He watches them play, or rather, watches Jess very patiently explaining for the 5th time what the dice are for, then sits to join them. Jess deals him a pile. They play.

It’s quiet, here in this desert plain, the sand as fine as hair and as white as bones. The wind didn’t whisper like this on Jakku, it howled, and Rey idly wonders what would have become of her if her parents had dropped her off here in this place instead, where the people rely on waterfarms and friendly trade and do not scavenge and cheat and steal. She might even have been taken to be a Stormtrooper, had she been left here. The thought snaps Rey out of her reverie.

“Your turn, Jedi,” Pava motions, and there’s a settling, deep in Rey’s heart.

There isn’t a point to contemplating what ifs. She’s here, now.

##### -

Rey starts playing sabacc with Jess instead of just pacing pointlessly around. It’s more calming than her walking, anyway. Some nights they play in Jess’s tent, sometimes in the lounge of the Millenium, and some nights they sit under the endless, ever changing stars. They play in companionable silence for a week or so until Rey builds up the courage to ask the older woman about her life. What’s the world like, outside of the Resistance, out of the war? What is beyond the sands of Jakku, for ordinary people?

Somehow, she’d assumed Jessika might have just had a normal childhood, loving parents, a stable home, something like Poe, but that isn’t the case. She sits, knees to her chest, and listens as Jess very steadily recounts her journey. Her vague, fuzzy memories of her home planet, Dandoran, before her family was captured by pirates. Before they were sold into slavery. Then the luck of the ship she’d been imprisoned on being apprehended and boarded by the New Republic. How her family had gone back to their homeworld while she’d stayed and made a home on Hosnian Prime, training to be a pilot just like the people who had saved her.

(Rey privately wonders how many people Jess had known on the doomed planet. Her family was spared, sure, but friends? Lovers? Jess doesn’t tell and Rey doesn’t ask.)

Jess’s voice is clear and calm, distant almost, as she recounts her past, and when she’s done, she fixes Rey with a level stare, almost like she’s daring the younger woman to pity her. A trap, well worn and familiar, something Jess has done before, has been laid, but Rey knows how to pass this particular test.

“Thank you. For telling me about your past.” Jess responds with a vague, noncommittal noise and Rey leans forward, hands on her knees.

“You didn’t have to tell me, if you didn’t want to. It must have been hard, recounting all of it.” 

“I know. It was. I just thought you deserved to know.” Something flickers in Jess’s impassive brown eyes, and Rey knows not to push.

##### -

They talk more, after that, about meaningless things, the weather, the local foods, the next mission and the next and the next. They still play cards, and Jess starts teaching Rey other forms of sabacc, less cards, more cards, more dice, less dice. Sometimes Rey even wins, and the small, fleeting smile on Jess’s face after each of Rey’s successes feels like more of a victory then the game.

Jess never smiles when she wins.

Rey still has nightmares, but they’re changing quicker than she can remember them. She still wakes up with a jolt, her blankets strewn across the room in the Falcon, a dim recollection of a red glow, a scream. Sometimes Finn is there, woken by her screams, and she clings onto him, crying silently for something she can’t remember, until she falls asleep again. He asks, again, again, but she shakes her head and buries her head into the blankets until he gives up. He means well, but he’s too close to this. Too close to her, and to the dark figure who stalks her mind.

She’s glad she can’t remember her dreams. She doesn’t want to deal with false memories and whatever insane concoction of trauma her mind can regurgitate for her. 

Of course, it doesn’t last.

##### -

_The floor clacks sharply under her boots as she strides down the polished hallway, white-armoured soldiers flanking her. She’s tracking sand from her shoes, from the village, residual blood making the grains stick for far longer than they should. She reaches her destination, and the door opens with a purring, gentle hiss. The guards remain by the door as she steps inside, pulling their blasters up to attention._

_The man inside the chamber is in so much pain, it radiates off him in waves. He’s bleeding, externally and internally, but it’s nothing compared to the utter chaos that rages from his mind._

I failed. I failed. I failed. But-

_There’s a bit of hope in there too._

_She will_ **_snuff it out_ ** _._

_“I had no idea we had the best pilot in the Resistance on board.” The voice rumbles up her throat and comes out sounding strange, deep, hollow. As empty as the Sith cave on Ahch-To._

_The man lifts his head from the torture device and stares right at her, and oh stars no, it’s Poe, and he looks at her, right in the face. Hatred like she’s never seen from him before in his eyes, turned black by the dim lights._

_She knows what this is. She knows who she is. She cannot move her body. She screams, even as Kylo Ren’s voice purrs out instead of her own._

_“Comfortable?”_

_“Not really.” And stars, she could cry, at the look on Poe’s face. The fight is still in him._

_“I’m impressed. No one has been able to get out of you-” Kylo Ren steps closer, closer, until Rey can see his mask reflected in Poe’s glassy, agonised eyes. “-What you did. With the map.”_

_“You might wanna rethink your technique,” Poe rasps, defiant to the last. Kylo pauses for a moment, and Rey pleads, even though she knows it won’t do anything. This has already happened, and there is nothing she can do._

_Kylo raises a hand, and for a moment Rey can’t feel anything at all._

_Then-_

_Then-_

_She has claws and teeth made of fire. She is obliterating. She is the emptiness of the coldest night, the blind destruction of a supernova. And she is in Poe’s mind._

_She tears into her friend, and he fights, with everything he has._

_She_ burns _into her friend, and he screams like she’s never heard anyone scream before._

##### -

She wakes with a start and a cry that dies in her throat before she can release it, warm hands helping her up, rubbing circles in her back. She cannot feel her tongue, or her fingers. She is so, so cold.

“Finn?” she whispers into the dark, but she blinks and her eyes adjust and it’s Jessika kneeling by her bunk, that carefully blank mask back on. 

“No, just me. He’s on scout duties. You were _convulsing_. I thought you were choking on something.” Rey regains feeling in her extremities and leans forwards, her hands closing into fists. Jess sits back, and for a moment they just stay there, the engine of the Falcon creating a low, crackling hum uncomfortably like a lightsaber.

“How long has this been happening to you?” There’s no judgement in her voice, just steady, impartial patience, like there’s always been.

“Ever since we left Ajan Kloss. It’s not every night. Usually I don’t remember the nightmares.”

“But you remember this one?”

“Yes.” The word is barely a breath out her mouth, and Jess is leaning forwards. Rey can feel the warmth of her hand on her back, seeping hot life back into her brittle bones.

She tells Jess everything.

The other woman is frowning when she’s done. “Poe told us he was tortured on the _Finalizer_. General Organa sent him to the medbay and they declared him fit for duty for Takodana, but you know Poe, he can talk his way out of anything… I didn’t… I didn’t know.”

Rey had started crying at some point, and she wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands. “I don’t think I knew either. Not really. Not like… Not like that.” Finn asking her to keep his Force-sensitivity from Poe and the others made sense now. He would’ve been the only one to really see the aftermath of Kylo’s torture.

“I don’t understand why I was in Kylo’s head, for that. I don’t know how I saw it.” She’s got a horrible suspicion, but she doesn’t want to think about it right now. She wants to think about the comforting presence of Jess in the dark and the slim hand rubbing in slow circles on her back.

“I don’t really get it either. But you have to understand.” Jess sits down in front of her and takes her hands, squeezing the warmth back into them. Rey can barely see her face in the dim lights. “Look. I know it was awful, but it’s over now. It happened years ago, and it wasn’t even you. You hear me? That was Kylo Ren. Not you.”

Rey shakes her head. “It might be more.”

“What do you mean?” A gentle question in the dark. Rey can tuck her face away now, refuse to answer, and the thing is, Jess would let her, wouldn’t see? She’d understand, her feelings shuttered behind a mask. Jess would get it.

“I died. On Exegol.”

It’s the first time she’s said it out loud.

“I killed Palpatine. I remember feeling so tired. I could feel my body shutting down. I _died_.”

She’s shaking now, her eyes blurring over with more tears, and Jess is there, holding her hands, keeping them warm. There’s a part of her that wishes she could match Jess’s calm stoicism, but she can’t, and she’d rather cling onto the comfort offered.

“But I woke up again, and Kylo- _Ben_ was holding me. I could feel everything he was feeling, and he was so, so glad to see me, and I didn’t know what was happening. I couldn’t tell if I was him or if he was me. I kissed him, or maybe he kissed me. I don’t remember. I don’t know.” Tears are rolling down her cheeks freely, and Jess says nothing at all.

“Then he collapsed. He died, because he gave his life force to me. He vanished into the Force, nothing left at all. That’s why there wasn’t a body to burn, or anything.”

Jess lets Rey cry, rubbing her thumbs over the back of Rey’s hands. When she’s calmed down a little, Jess gently says, “You think there’s a little bit left of him in you. Because he gave you his life.”

“It explains the dreams, doesn’t it?”

Jess nods slowly, then bites her lip. “Actually, no it doesn’t. You’re nothing at all like Kylo Ren.”

“We’re closer than you might imagine. Kylo was bad, Ben was better, and I’ve felt the touch of the dark side-”

“Rey, _they were the same person_ . And you are _nothing_ like him. You’re so kind, you’re so fundamentally _good_. You could never be like him, not even in your worst nightmares.” They’re close enough that Rey can feel Jess’s breath on her face.

“The dreams," Rey whispers. "They're memories, Jess, and they're not mine. What other possibilities are there?"

The other woman is silent, her eyes shining in the dark. Then she shakily breathes out, and leans forwards. Rey closes her eyes, and they lean on each other like that, forehead to forehead, sharing warmth and breath and strength.

"I don't know what any of this means for you," Rey hears Jess murmur. "But I swear to you, we'll get to the bottom of this. You are your own person. And I know her, and she is _good_."

Rey chooses to believe her, crushing the kernel of despair and guilt down, down, down.


	2. chapter two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I know that we've got some potential  
> 'Cause that look you gave me was so gentle  
> \- North, Clairo

Bringing  _ all _ the Jedi texts with her as they ventured across the galaxy had ended up being useful after all, and instead of playing sabacc, Rey and Jess pore over the old tomes. Jess hasn't ever touched real books like this before, and she handles them with the utmost care, like bombs about to go off in her hands. Rey's been busy creating a kind of key to be able to read the books, which she'd intended on using with Finn, but Jess is a good reading companion, and already familiar with a few of the ancient languages, to Rey's surprise.

"I studied Ancient on Hosnian Prime." A rare, slight smile. Rey wonders how Jess would react if she knew they were the only two alive to set eyes on these books. 

It's slow going, although they can disregard a few of the newer tomes about weaponry and Jedi training techniques. The texts are dense and sometimes sentences wrap and twist around each other, meaning one thing but saying another. They still talk, though Jess is a bit gentler than before, and sometimes there are long silences left unbroken, except for the quiet scribbling of notes.

At night, Jess sneaks into the Falcon, and whispers Rey stories to help her fall asleep. Sometimes they are tales of Jess in the war, or of other pilots, but she skirts around the topic of Kylo Ren and for that Rey is grateful. Other times, they're whispers of legends long gone, stories of Luke Skywalker that even Rey hasn't heard, or of unnamed heroes of old. It makes her feel a bit childish, being whispered to sleep like this, their hands loosely grasped together, but Jess does not flinch from the dirty details, the truth. Rey falls asleep and her dreams are hazy and indistinct, never fully taking form. When she wakes to BB-8’s merry whistling and a new planet to jump to, Jess is always gone.

-

They aren’t as discreet as she thinks, because as Finn is handing her tools to repair the aged, failing shield generator, he asks: “What’s up with you and Pava?”

She stops dead, wrench in hand, and looks up at where he’s crouched, BB-8 chirping merrily at his side, from the hatch in the floor that she’s pried open, and feels a weird sense of deja-vu. 

_ “Why does everyone want to go back to Jakku?!” _

“Rey?” She blinks, and quickly tightens one of the lines before it spews the weird, sticky substance she’s deemed  _ shield gunk _ all over her hands.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“C’mon, Rey. I came back late and she was trying to sneak out. I asked her what was up, and she just gave me one of those scary looks of hers and went back to her tent.” Finn peers over the edge of the hatch, and she sighs, dusting off her hands and getting to her feet. 

“She’s helping me, with the nightmares I’ve been having,” Rey says, keeping her voice low. Jess hasn’t spoken about it, but Rey gets the feeling she’d rather keep everything about what they’re doing quiet. Jannah is at the helm of the Millenium right now, and sound carries almost too well in these old hallways. 

“I didn’t know you’d gotten so close.”

“Believe me, I’m as surprised as you are. We just talk, Finn. Nothing’s happening.” 

He takes the wrench back from her and puts it away, giving BB-8 a pointed look. The droid looks at Rey, back to Finn, and very loudly whirs out the room, presumably to go bother Jannah. Finn turns back to Rey.

“You know you can talk to me about anything, right? You’re my best friend.”

“I know.” She smiles up at him, this kind, sweet man with a heart of gold that a lifetime of mental conditioning and brutal training couldn’t crush out of him. “I’m as surprised as you are that… whatever this is, is happening. But we can handle this.”

“You just _ said  _ nothing is happening.” One of his eyebrows twitches up, and she fights the urge to laugh, despite the circumstances.

“Oh, you’re one to talk. Have you spoken to Poe recently?” Finn makes a face at her and tosses her a roll of mesh tape, just as she was about to ask for it. She ducks back into the hold, waiting for a reply.

“You’re welcome. And no, not really. He’s been so busy.” Something in his voice has changed and Rey sticks her head out the hold to see Finn’s normally expressive face stilled. She taps a finger against the floor to get his attention.

“Well, of course he’s busy, he’s… Generalling. Running the entire Resistance? We’ve got an easier job, breaking into these training camps, reuniting these families. The First Order is distracted, on the retreat, and Poe’s forcing them into that corner. Helping  _ us _ .”

“I know. I just miss him, that’s all.” Rey makes a sympathetic face at the look on Finn’s and climbs out of the hold to give him a greasy, sticky hug. He accepts it without complaining, even when the grime of the hold clings to his shirt. Actually, it looks like one of Poe’s.

“We’ll be back in a flash, don’t you worry. He’s probably missing you as much as you’re missing him.”

“You really think so?” Finn looks at her with so much hope that it gives her pause. Something clicks into place as she stares at her friend, and she can’t help the slow smile that spreads across her face.

“What?” Finn asks, and she shakes her head, hopping back down into the thrumming dark of the hold to hide her grin.

“Nothing. It’s nothing.” She wonders how she’d missed it for so long. The Force wasn’t needed to see who owned her best friend’s golden heart.

#####  -

Two days after they fix the Millennium's shield generator, they arrive at a small, mild dwarf planet in the Outer Rim whose name Rey finds completely unpronounceable, covered in thick forest, towering waterfalls and deep, still pools. There’s only one settlement, and it seems to mostly be a trading outpost that has expanded into a small town. The return of some of their lost children sparks something part celebration and part funeral for the others who Finn and Rey were too late to find. Either way, a bonfire is lit in the centre of the town square, and tables are dragged out from the ramshackle houses. Rey eagerly samples a good portion of the local cuisine on display and takes a liking to the light green fizzing spirit that comes from the huge barrels carved from the trees, and wanders as the sun sets and tiny glowing insects begin to flit about the night sky.

She finds Jess at the edge of the party, a slight smile playing her lips as she nurses a cup of her own. Jess’s smile grows a little wider as she spots Rey, and the women stand in warm companionable silence as they watch Finn attempt to  _ not _ tread on the multiple legs of the local who’s trying to dance with him.

“Want to come dance with me?” Rey blurts, and Jess tips her head at her.

“Rey, do you even know how to dance?” From another, it might have been a bit of an insult, but from Jess, it was a genuine question.

“Not to songs like this. Teach me?” Rey beams at Jess, and she sighs in defeat, setting her cup down, and links her arm through Rey’s, pulling them both closer to the fire and the music.

Rey picks up what Jess is doing quickly, and they swing through the crowd, managing not to step on each other’s feet. She vaguely registers a few stares, but who cares? Jess is warm and grinning in her arms, not trying to hide her emotions in front of her for maybe the first time ever. Rey spins her, and she whoops as she twirls, coming back, a planet orbiting the sun. 

They dance, and dance, until the crowd begins to disperse in the early hours of the morning. Tripping back to the Millenium Falcon in the dark would be hard and maybe a little terrifying if they weren’t leaning on each other, Jess’s arm around Rey’s waist, giggling like children, the fizzy green drink beginning to take its toll on their clarity. Jess helps Rey up the ramp, making sure she doesn’t hit her head on the low entrance. When the pilot tries to go back out, Rey whines, pulling her with her. 

“Gotta go back to m’ tent, Rey,” mumbles Jess, even as she’s shucking off her boots. She tips herself backwards and Rey follows her, her head fitting comfortably in the space next to Jess’s neck. She feels warm arms wrap around her shoulders.

“I’ll stay until you fall asleep, o mighty Jedi warrior,” she hears Jess breathe, hears the smile in her voice. She stifles a laugh in Jess’s hair.

“‘s called a  _ master _ . ‘m a Jedi master, Pava.”

“Shush. We’re gonna regret this in the morning already. I can taste the hangover.” Jess wriggles further into the bunk so Rey will have more room, and their knees knock together, dissolving them into giggles again. Once they’ve died out, the sounds of the forest outside take over. Finn had turned off the Falcon’s engines to refuel, and without them, Rey can hear the sound of the distant waterfalls crashing.

“Night, Jess,” Rey whispers into the dark.

As she’s drifting off, she realises that today was the first time she’s ever heard Jess laugh. It’s a beautiful sound, and her last thought before sleep is that she’d like to hear it again, and again, and again.

#####  -

A week after that, they’re going through the Jedi texts, when Jess says, “Hang on.”

Rey scoots across the bunk to where Jess has set the book down, smoothing her callused fingers over the ancient pages. She cranes her neck to see what the other woman’s found, and Jess taps the spot helpfully.

“You said you had a dyad with Kylo-  _ Ben _ , or whatever, right? And Palpatine removed it? Do you think this could be it?” Rey reads the passage, going very silent and still.

Oh.

_ Oh. _

“Maybe. I think so.” She scoops up the book and rereads the page. Again. Again.

_ When a dyad is ripped away, either soul may feel the reverberations of the tear, much like a plastoid bond breaking. The severed ends lash backwards and forwards, stinging, still carrying the signature of the other being, even in death… _

“Rey?” Jess’s voice is so, so gentle, and her hands even more so, as they wipe the tears trickling down Rey’s face. She sniffles, and slowly closes the book, marking the page with her finger.

“I didn’t want this,” she tells Jess, the words spilling out. “The whole  _ dyad _ , the connection. It wasn’t my choice. He hurt my friends, he hurt so many people. He hurt  _ me _ .”

(He said he didn’t want to, he said, he said… But he had, hadn’t he? He’d left her like  _ this _ to pick up the pieces of a broken thing, not of her creation, not of her choice.)

“And now that he’s gone, it doesn’t even mean the pain will stop. All these families, their kids gone forever, and all we can do is visit them and tell them the truth. And these visions I’ve been having… Will they ever stop? I just want to put this behind me. I want to move  _ on _ .”

Jess cups Rey’s face in her hands, and even with her tear-blurred eyes, Rey can see the open, raw earnestness in the other woman’s face.

“Oh, Rey. You _ will _ . Ben Solo left a gaping wound in the galaxy, but just like it heals, so will you.” Her voice isn’t soothing, it’s factual, and Rey clings onto the absolute belief, the infallible strength in her words. 

“Nothing stays hurt forever.”

#####  -

Now that the mystery of Rey’s dreams (or visions, or memories, whatever they are. She hasn’t quite decided what to call them) has been solved, she doesn’t expect Jess to really stick around. Sure, they’d become a lot closer since they’d met, and Jess knew a lot more about her then Finn or Poe, but… this is different. Finn had been the first ever person she’d really connected with, in her entire life, two souls running, misaligned compass points, looking in different directions until they’d figured it out. Undoubtedly, he was the closest to her soul. Poe, on the other hand, had been a vaguely irritating acquaintance she’d put up with for Finn’s sake, then a vaguely irritating friend who had her back as much as she had his, and now she supposed he was as close to a vaguely irritating big brother as she was ever going to get. Han, Chewie, Leia, Luke, had been somewhat like parental figures, even as their faces grew distant in her mind’s eye (except for Chewie, obviously, who watched everyone like a hawk when they piloted the Falcon, except for her. She was still learning Shyriiwook, but she got the idea. She was  _ trusted _ to fly Han’s ship). Rose and Jannah were friends, but she’d never really gotten to spend as much time as she’d wanted with them before they’d parted ways.

(She does not know what to call Ben Solo.)

But Jess is different. And against all expectations, she stays. They go back to playing sabacc, but sometimes if both of their minds are tired from the days of planning and fighting, they instead retire to Rey’s room in the Falcon, and swap stories until Rey falls asleep. She's half convinced that Jess never actually gets tired, because she's always gone in the morning, no matter how comfortable she’d looked as they sprawl over Rey’s bunk. They gravitate towards each other after good missions, share meals, and Rey’s dreams start becoming less ominous, lighter things. Dreams she’d rather remember then forget.

A week passes of this, and Rey wakes up one morning, one of the Jedi histories still open on her chest, and realises she hasn't dreamt of Kylo Ren at all.

She isn't sure if she'd even thought about him over the last few days.

She tells Jess about it at breakfast, as they sit on the strange red moss that seems to be equivalent to grass on the misty Outer Rim moon that they’ve found themselves on today. Finn and Jannah and two of the ex-Troopers have gone into the nearby village. Today won’t be a good day. The intel they’d gotten had told them that every child taken from this planet had perished in the explosion of Starkiller. The look on Finn’s face as he’d left this morning told her enough of how he felt about it.

“You sound almost sad about not remembering,” Jess says, in that measured tone of hers, finishing off her loaf of polystarch. Rey hands her own off, having had enough of the bland, chewy dough on Jakku to last a lifetime. 

“It’s not sadness, exactly,” she replies, running her hands over the damp moss. “I’m the only one left alive in the galaxy who knew… the truth of it, I guess. I don’t want to remember, but if I don't, who will?” What she doesn’t say is:  _ Maybe I deserve to be tormented by this memory. Maybe I should keep Leia and Han’s son with me, for as long as possible, for as long as I live. _

Jess props her chin on her knees, peeling strips off the polystarch. “Rey, you  _ won’t _ ever forget. You’ll look back, and it’ll still be there, you can’t just wipe everything that happened out of your head. If we could do that, we’d never learn anything from anything. Those Jedi history books we’ve been reading would be next to useless.” 

“Should I write a book about it then?”

“Maybe you should. It’d be a bestseller. Call it  _ The Skywalker Saga _ .

“I don’t know if I have a right to that name.”

Jess bumps Rey with her shoulder. “Hey. You said it yourself. Han basically emotionally adopted you, from what I’ve heard about your short time together. Leia always looked at you like another kid, same as she looked at Dameron. If anyone has a right to the name, it’s you.” Jess smiles at her, and it’s almost startling as Rey realises how much Jess has opened up to her, warmed up to her. There’s a flicker of something in her chest as she watches Jess tuck a strand of dark hair back into her messy, flyaway bun.

Rey sighs, trying to release the tension that’s been building in her shoulders and arms, and tips herself sideways to rest her head on Jess’s shoulder. The reddish, iron-filled atmosphere tints the whole world red on this moon, and the stars look like they’re bleeding. Rey closes her eyes.

“How do you always know what to say at the right times? It’s infuriating. Poe does the same thing.”

“Chalk it up to a pilot thing, then. We make up good ideas as we go along.” Jess’s voice sounds a little strained, and Rey almost lifts her head up to see what’s wrong, until the other woman wraps an arm around her shoulders, and they sit there together under the dark sky.

#####  -

Rey knows that Jess is getting curious about Finn’s training, the way the pilot’s eyes linger on them as they “sneak” off to whatever isolated place they can. Finn is meditating, floating a few feet off the ground with the small pebbles that made up the surface on this planet, when she suggests they tell the others.

Finn’s eyes fly open and he falls bodily to the ground, one of the stones almost hitting him in the head as they collapse as one.

“ _ No _ ! No, we can _ not _ tell Pava.”

Rey frowns and helps him up. “Okay, why?”

Finn looks sheepish. “She’ll tell Poe. I already asked her to not tell him that you’re with us, but if she hears that I have the Force, there’s no way she’ll be able to keep that quiet.”

“You haven’t told Poe I’m  _ here _ ?”

“Look, remember how upset with me he was when he heard I was going away? I don’t know how to explain how you’re with me and not him without also telling him I have the Force.”

“And why don’t you just-” She realises why just as Finn’s expression darkens, and they say his name as one.

“ _ Ren _ .”

Finn’s face is pained. “I guess it’s irrational but- I don’t want Poe afraid of me. I want everything to just stay the same.”

“And it  _ will _ . You know Poe, he’ll understand.”

“Will he? He knows you and trusts you, but you should have seen how he was after Exegol. After the shit on the  _ Steadfast _ . The look on his face when you mind tricked those troopers…”

Rey feels sick. “He knows me, he knows  _ you _ . He’s not going to shut you out if you tell him the truth, Finn.”

Her friend’s face has shut down, and he hands her a spanner, mouth in a firm line. “I’m not telling him, not on a comm like this. I’ll tell him face to face, when we come back.”

“You  _ do _ know the longer we hide this, the worse it’ll be, right?”

“It won’t be for much longer.” She looks quizzically at him, and he gives her a tentative smile, full of anticipation, the anxiety of a homecoming long overdue.

“Jannah didn’t tell you? We’ve got 2 more planets, and that’ll be all the intel we managed to decrypt from the First Order. We have to go back to Ajan Kloss to make out the rest. We’re going  _ home _ .”

#####  -

_ It is bitterly cold on Starkiller, each gust of wind like a slap to the face, and she can feel nothing but the roaring pain in the wound in her side and the faint buzz of the lightsaber she wields. FN-2187 is on his knees, panting in the snow, the limp body of the scavenger girl in his arms, and she  _ hates _ them, she hates all of them, all of these useless arrogant fools who think they can stand in  _ her  _ way. These scraps of garbage and filth that her father had scraped off who knows where.  _

_ Her father is dead. She had killed him. _

No.

_ Kylo Ren slams his lightsaber into the ground, snow boiling into water. He is going to burn this stormtrooper into ash. He is going to wipe this defector from the fucking universe. _

_ “Traitor!” he bellows at the other man, and the trooper stands, ignites a lightsaber that shouldn’t fit as well as it does in his hands. The face looking back through the snow reminds him of the set, fierce determination he used to have, when he was foolish and blind and training under Skywalker. The rage sets his body alight, and he hisses as the gash in his side shrieks in pain. _

_ “That lightsaber.” He points, shaking in fury. “It belongs to me.” _

_ “Come get it,” the other man lashes back, and charges, untrained, unwieldy. He attacks, but is forced to retreat as Kylo presses him backwards, wild slashing strikes pressing him down. Rey registers dimly that it’s her on the ground, unconscious. She wasn’t awake for any of this. All she knows is how this ended. _

_ She does not want to see how this ends. _

_ Kylo is breathtakingly casual. He holds his saber in one hand, the pain still driving him a little off balance, and his face is blank as he drives the flaming hilt of the saber into Finn’s shoulder. Finn screams, and screams, and Rey is sobbing, she can feel the tears on her face, or is it the snow on Kylo’s? _

_ It’s obscene, the smoke curling out of the hole in Finn’s shoulder, and under her horror, she can feel Kylo Ren’s glee. There is no softness, or kindness, or empathy, just a void, just rage, just destruction. There is nothing of the man on Exegol who gave his life for hers. There is nothing even resembling love. _

_ It’s just pain. _

#####  -

She’s awake, her shoulder and her side throbbing, her face damp with tears. She jerks out of bed, almost falling onto the floor, barely registering Jess lying beside her. A small part of her brain goes,  _ Oh, she does sleep _ , but she’s out of her cabin in a second and stumbling into Finn’s.

He’s still awake, shirtless and sleep deprived, poring over a holo of the system they’re jumping to tomorrow, and she crashes into his surprised arms, the sight of him digging fingers into her heart. He hugs her automatically, rocking gently back on his heels.

“I’m sorry, I’m  _ sorry _ , I’m so sorry Finn-” He’s alive and warm and  _ there _ and it’s enough to send her back into a fresh well of tears as he murmurs soothing things in her ear.

“Woah, Rey, it’s alright, it’s alright. What happened? What’s going on?” He guides her down to sit on his bed, and she draws her knees up to her chest, feeling very heavy and small. She’s cried all over Finn, she realises to her mortification, but he doesn’t seem to care or notice.

"Is it the dreams again? Talk to me Rey." His hands are big and warm around hers and she's shaking. All of this could have been taken away. It could have been destroyed so, so easily. There is a starburst of pale skin on his shoulder, the pucked, jagged mark all that remains of the wound she had just seen in horrifying clarity.

"Can I see your back?" she asks, the words stuttering out of her mouth in a rush, her sobs rubbing the air from her lungs. Finn looks at her quizzically but turns, the dim light from the hallway lights catching the mark that followed his spine. It shines, several shades paler than the rest of his skin, and she looks at it, remembering smoking, ruined flesh, the grotesque hint of white spinal column. The bacta has healed it remarkably well. If you looked quickly, you might not even realise it was there.

"What's this about, Rey?" He asks her, turning back around, hands in his pockets. She chews on her bottom lip. She's already busted into his room in the dead of the night. He might as well know.

"I… The dreams. Some of them are memories. Not my memories, but Kylo's memories." Her voice is surprisingly steady. She could say more, but the words jam up in her throat. Finn sits down beside her, brow furrowed in concern.

"You saw the fight on Starkiller." A statement, not a question, and his eyes are steady and solid as he takes her hands again. "Rey, it was over a year ago. It's healed. Ren's dead. It happened, it's done. There wasn't anything you could've done about it."

"Does it hurt you?"

He pauses. "Sometimes when it's hot, it feels like my back tightens up. And I can't bend down to touch my toes like I used to in First Order drills, or it aches, a little. But it's fine, seriously."

She fixes him with a stern stare until he can’t hold it anymore. “I think the worst part was the coma. I thought I was dead, and I could feel myself just… decomposing. Something like that. I thought maybe the First Order had got me back, or maybe everything had been one sick dream. When I got out of it, I’d lost so much time… I didn’t know what was real or not until Poe found me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You keep saying that, but Rey, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for.” Now it’s his turn to stare earnestly at her while she looks away to the floor, unworthy of his gaze. “You saved my life on Starkiller, and you saved it more times I can count. You’re not responsible for what happened.”

Her head is pounding, but Finn’s hands are slowly bleeding the cold from her hands, and the phantom-pain is fading. “I know. Logically, I know, but… I felt the lightsaber in my hands. I could feel it, and the cold, and I could feel what  _ he _ was feeling.” 

“You said he faded back into the Force, right? Have you tried… talking to him?” He’s tentative, keeping his voice neutral, and she knows he must be quieting the part of his mind that remembers the pain, the coma, the long rehabilitation afterwards. Ranks of white, cut down by bleeding fire.

“I think I could talk to him, if I tried. I don’t think it would help me, at least not now.” She feels a lot calmer now, and sighs as Finn draws her into another hug. They sit there for a long while as Rey’s heartbeat slows to match Finn’s. 

He pulls back, pats her cheek. “Go back to bed, get some sleep. We leave early tomorrow.”

“I think it would be today, actually.”

He laughs gently. “You know what I mean.  _ Go _ .” 

Rey stumbles back to her bunk, exhaustion weighing down her legs, and as she falls asleep, she realises that Jess is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh oh...  
> thanks for reading if you've made it this far!


	3. chapter three

The second last planet the team visits is so far out of the way that it doesn’t fall under First Order or Resistance jurisdiction, making it a risky destination. Often locals of “neutral” places like this tended towards the pricklier side, and neither Rey nor Finn have the stomach for fighting civilians, even in self defense. As they descend from the thick purple clouds that blanket the planet’s surface, Rey can see a small party waiting for them on the rocky surface below. She reaches out, just a little, and feels the deep, simmering anger that the locals below are feeling, the weight of it, the bitterness. She’s about to warn Finn when he comms her from the helm of the Falcon.

“ _ We need to take this slow. Stay with the ‘trooper freighter. I’ll land the Falcon first. Be ready to fly. _ ”

“Alright. Defensive positions, shields up.”

The Falcon begins its descent. They fall into the reverse V shape and wait, the carrier freighter cradled between them all. It’s almost empty now, but there are maybe 3 or 4 kids sitting inside who might still have family down there. She can see Jess’s X-wing in the other arm of the V. They’d left in a hurry this morning, so she hadn’t had a chance to talk to her yet.

“ _ Transferring Chewie to comms. I’m going out. I count 20, 30 of them. They have anti-aircraft weaponry. No sudden moves _ .” Finn’s voice is tense and Rey wishes she could have joined them on the ground.

She squints below as the tiny shape of Finn exits the Falcon, hands above his head. He’s waving his arms, pointing up to where the rest of the team are hovering. A bead of sweat drips down Rey’s neck.

Finn’s still talking, and she reaches down, to try and gauge what’s happening. The locals’ anger has diffused, and they’re bewildered, some feeling overwhelmed. They don’t trust him, not yet.

_ Rey. They’re asking me to prove to them who I am. _

_ Show them your lightsaber. Be careful. _

She watches as Finn lowers his hands slowly, and unclips his saber from his belt. He draws it, ignites it. The deep purple of his double-ended saber matches the turbulent clouds circling overhead. The mood below shifts rapidly, fear to awe.

_ Alright, they trust me. It’s safe to come down. _

“All units, we can land,” Rey relays into the comms, and a collective sigh of relief echoes in her ears as the pilots release their tension. They slowly, carefully ease their way downwards, settling in the dust. The whir of the engines is loud in Rey’s ears as she hops out her craft and makes her way to Finn’s side, where he’s reattached his lightsaber to his belt and is shaking hands with a tall, masked, hooded figure who appears to be the leader of the small group behind them.

“You are Jedi also, yes?” They speak in heavily accented Galactic Basic, and Rey shakes their hand as well. The leather gloves that cover their hands are cracked and peeling. Despite the thick purple clouds, it looks like it hasn’t rained on this planet in a long, long time.

“I am. My name is Rey. Children were taken from you?”

“My son, barely two cycles old. Thirty more, from our tribe and the neighbouring ones. How many with you?” The hope in the person’s voice is fragile, wavering, and the truth makes Rey's chest ache.

Rey glances at Finn, who looks as forlorn as she feels, and replies, “Only four. All female. They’re inside the freighter.”

The being nods, seemingly composed, and very slowly kneels, pulling their mask off their face. Rey catches a flash of blueish skin and red eyes before the person wails, gloves scrabbling in the dirt. Finn closes his eyes, his mouth pressed in a firm line, as the other locals kneel with their leader in the dirt, their heartbroken cries filling the desolate plain.

-

The children are returned, and the plain tribes gather to hold a funeral for the ones who couldn’t make it. They decide to stay out of respect, and besides, they need to stock up on supplies. The locals are understandably wary of them and stay away for the most part, but their children aren’t as cautious. Finn is soon swarmed by a flock of small, scrawny, blue-skinned humanoids who pounce on his back and swing from his arms. They’re entranced as he makes small pebbles float in the air, snatching, laughing.

“He’s good with those kids, isn’t he?” Jess sidles up from behind, her voice blank in a way Rey hasn’t heard from her in weeks. 

“Yes, he is. It’s sweet.” Something is pressing down on her chest and getting rapidly heavier.

Jess folds her arms, and says in the same, placid, infuriating tone, “Well that’ll be helpful for you in the future.”

Rey whirls to face her. “What on earth do you mean by that?”

“It doesn’t matter. You should go join him. Entertain the kids for a bit.”

“Jess, what’s going on? Talk to me.” Rey reaches for her, but she pulls away, stepping back, her face fixed in that impenetrable mask. The ground is falling away from her feet.  _ This is not how it’s meant to be. _

“I’m going to work on my ship.” She’s turning away now, slipping away, and Rey doesn’t know what to do.

“ _ Jess _ .” The pilot pauses at the tone of Rey’s voice, shoulders set in a hard line.

“Jess, talk to me. Something’s clearly bothering you, what is it?”

Jess does not turn to face her, her next words barely more than a whisper. “What are you doing, when you go off with Finn? Where do you go?” The question throws Rey off balance, and she’s scrambling to find something to say that won’t undo Finn’s plan.

“I- It’s not my story to tell. It’s not that important, anyway.” She knows it’s the wrong thing to say when she sees Jess’s shoulder sag, just a little. It feels like there’s a hollow space in Rey’s ribs, slowly caving in. But what can she say? What could she possibly say to Jess to make her understand?

_ Turn around _ , she begs her, silently,  _ Just look at me. Look at me.  _

Jess walks away.

-

The next week passes in a blur of misery and guilt. When Finn finally announces that they're going back home, sitting around the bonfire on the last planet, she just watches Jess's faint, relieved smile, how it doesn't reach her eyes, how she walks off to sleep long before the other pilots are finished celebrating. Rey wants to go after her, but she’s too afraid of making whatever’s wrong even worse. The indifference stings, but hate would destroy her.

Jess has not looked her in the eyes for a week, and Rey is feeling every second of it.

"Seriously, what's wrong with you two?" Finn lowers his saber, switching it off with a deft flick of his wrist. He’s a quick learner, almost startlingly so, incredibly strong in the Force and with a real talent for saber combat. A couple more months, and he’d definitely be beating her. He’s still too hesitant with attack though, more comfortable fighting defensively, which is the main reason why he’d opted for an overall shorter blade length, but with dual ends that detached in the middle. In a perfect world, he’d never have to use it, but there will always be more battles to fight, as long as the First Order maintained even a semblance of power in the galaxy. 

“ _ Hello _ ? Rey, c’mon.”

“Sorry Finn. I was just… Yeah. What did you say?”

“I was  _ asking _ why you and Jess keep acting like the other has some kind of disease you’re afraid of catching.” Finn hooks the saber to his belt and folds his arms, one eyebrow arched expressively. Something about his stance reminds her of Master Skywalker.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, bantha shit. You guys were like… magnets, and now someone’s reversed the poles. Repelling instead of attracting. You keep watching and walking around each other but not actually talking. It’s making everyone tense, hell, it’s making  _ me _ tense.”

She scoffs. “Glad to know  _ everyone’s _ so invested in our relationship.”

“Oh it’s a relationship now, is it?” Finn waggles his eyebrows at her and she rolls her eyes, huffing out an embarrassed breath.  _ Jess has been watching me? _

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed this Finn, but I don’t exactly have time for… that. Hell, I don’t even know  _ how _ I’d start. Jakku wasn’t exactly flush with dating opportunities.”

“And the First Order was?”

“Well it’s not like I see you running around with a boyfriend.” He points the saber at her teasingly, though there’s a dark flush to his cheeks. She bats it away and tries for a smile, though she knows it won’t be convincing. 

“I don’t- Poe- We-  _ Don’t _ deflect, this conversation is very specifically about you and Testor.” 

“There’s nothing else to say. I think I made her mad at me. I don’t know how to fix it. That’s all!” She clips her saber to her belt and sighs, stretching out the muscles in her hands. Finn looks concerned.

“Mad? Mad how?”

“She… asked about this. The training.” She waves at the earth they’ve stomped flat in the two hours since they’d begun. “I tried to deflect it. Didn’t go well.” Finn groans.

“You know she can sniff out lies like a bloodhound, right? Half the reason why Poe assigned her to go with us. She’s like a bullshit detector.”

“Well, that would’ve been helpful information a week ago Finn,” she mutters, feeling like something has scraped her hollow. He pats her arm reassuringly and pulls her to sit down on a fallen tree branch. They sit there for a while, soaking in the Force, feeling it move through them, a comfort, always.

“I think about her. All the time.” Her voice is low enough to just be another bit of ambience, but she knows Finn is listening. “When she’s not there. I think about her eyes and her hair and that hideous orange jumpsuit all the pilots wear. I keep seeing her hands.” Rey squeezes her eyes shut, and there they are, clever and quick and slim, machine oil stuck in the crevices.  _ Kriff _ .

“And she’s so damn  _ wise _ , Finn, always knows what to say. She looks at you and it’s like she’s reading a holo, or something, but I just want her looking at me. And she’s been avoiding me all week and I don’t know what to do. I miss her.”

Finn sucks in a breath and lets it out slowly. “Hate to break it to you, but I think you might be in love.”

She barks out a startled laugh.  _ Not _ what she’d been expecting. “Love? Hardly. I know love, it isn’t this.”

He fixes her with the most deeply unimpressed, Leia-like look she’s ever seen on another face that wasn’t the late General’s. “Seriously?”

“ _ What _ ?”

“Rey, I-” he lets out a frustrated sigh and shakes his head. “Alright, you know love? Tell me what it is.”

“It’s…” The words dry up in her throat and she coughs to buy herself some time. They sit there in the twilight of the jungle planet, some far off creatures chittering in the trees high above. She could close her eyes and meditate right here, melt into the pulsing flow of the Force. She knows Finn’s waiting for an answer.  _ Not yet _ , she whispers into the trees.  _ Not now. _

He pushes up and off the branch, offering a hand to her. He’s warm and solid and steady, grounding, even as her heart threatens to beat out of her chest. When he hugs her, something eases, just a little bit.  _ No matter what happens, you’ve got him.  _

He pulls away to look at her seriously, his brows furrowing slightly. “You’re smart. You’ll figure this out, Rey.”

-

And the thing is, she thought she already had.

Love, that is. It was the spark in Finn’s eyes when he talked about Poe, the way Leia had smiled, so gracious and so fierce, whenever she spoke of Han. There’d always been a lightness, a sense of wonder, a glow in the Force so tangible she felt she could almost taste it.  _ Love is what makes the world go round _ , a memory of a long ago whisper, somewhere far away. She didn’t recognise that voice, but it rested in her mind, reverberating like her X-wing was as they shot through hyperspace on their way home. BB-8 has seemingly picked up on her mood (could droids do that?) and remains uncharacteristically quiet, something Rey isn’t particularly sure she wanted. A droid, she could talk to, bounce her ideas off of, but alone in the echo chamber of space? She is feeling startlingly alone.

Here is the thing- when Rey looks back to when air rushed back in her lungs, when her fingers regained their feeling, when she came back to life- She remembers fear, and an ache, deep inside, like a wound that had never really healed. She remembers cold, and pain, and a dark shadow passing over her soul she did not want. But she hadn’t been all there, not yet. She hadn’t really come back into herself until she was back on Ajan Kloss, her best friends in the world holding her as the Resistance celebrated a victory that had been unthinkable only a few hours ago. She’d laughed so hard she almost cried, and it had felt like the world was swelling up under her feet. She’d been buoyant, lighter than air.

And here is the thing- in those brief hours of joy before the horror and the exhaustion and the urge to  _ run  _ had set in, she hadn’t thought of Ben Solo at all. 

Thinking of him makes her feel tired, fragile to her core, thin and worn and pulled taut like an elastic cord, on the verge of snapping. He’d terrified her, ever since she’d sensed him in the forests of Takodana, like a prickling rash that stayed stuck to somewhere she couldn’t reach or relieve. There had been the urge to save him, help him, but with every loss and every atrocity, every wound in the Force that cut her down to the bone, it grew harder to stay objective, to promise that she was only doing this for Han. She watched him break every heart that tried to help him until there was only hers left. 

_ Is this what love is supposed to be? _

She shudders, suddenly cold, and BB-8 beeps gently, doing something to the interior of the cockpit that warms it slightly, easing the chill that had settled in her chest. 

She thinks of Jess instead.

Eyes as dark as the Sith pool on Ahch-To but a million times warmer, alight with life and fierceness and so much beauty it had stolen the breath clean out her chest. Jess is quiet, seemingly the calmest of all the people Rey had known, but there is a stillness to her that belies something waiting, something else. All quick half-smiles and brushes of touch, on her wrists and hands, so light she could almost imagine that they’d never happened. And she missed her, physically, an ache in the pit of her stomach that Jess had simply filled by being around. 

Rey thinks of the pilot’s clever fingers and quicksilver smile, and finds that maybe she does know what love is, after all.

-

She tells Finn first, about her plan, and after some hesitation, he agrees with her. They set out the next morning, after first meal, and set off into the jungle in full view of the hangars. It’s a test of will, to not look behind her, but Rey knows that Jess will follow. 

She and Finn find a good, empty clearing, and spar briefly, yellow and purple sabers spraying sparks over the damp leaf-litter floor. Then, she sends Finn to do the obstacle course that she’d done under Leia’s tutelage only a few months ago, and waits.

Once she’s certain Jess is watching from the trees, she turns.

“Pilot.”

“Jedi.” If Jess is embarrassed at being caught, she doesn’t show it, shaking her boots clear of leaf litter as she joins Rey in the sun. “But I guess Finn’s a Jedi now, too?”

“He’s not all the way there yet. In the old Republic he might be considered a padawan, but we’re not exactly going for historical accuracy here.”

Jess’s tone is easy, casual, like nothing has happened at all. Her eyes are fathomless, dark and deep, but warming slightly, and that breathes hope into Rey’s veins. “And you and Finn aren’t a thing.”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you guys tell us?” She can hear the unspoken message.  _ Why didn’t you tell  _ me _? _

“You might have told Poe. Finn wanted to do that himself, but-”

“Poe’s avoiding him. I’d tell you why, but I don’t think that’s  _ my _ story to tell.” There, a bit of venom, emotion. It stings, but it’s better than nothing at all. If Jess really didn’t care, it would show.

“It’s not. They know what they’re doing.” 

Jess snorts. “You’re smart enough to know that what you just said is bullshit. Lie to me, whatever, but don’t lie to yourself.”

Something in the air has shifted, they’re just not talking about Poe and Finn now. Rey decides to just be as honest as possible and hope for the best.

"I  _ miss _ you. I don't know why you've been avoiding me."

Jess drops her gaze and sighs, heavily. "I miss you too. I just… I've done this kind of shit before. I didn't want to go through it again."

Rey steps forwards, takes the other woman's hands. "What kind of shit? Jess, I don't understand."

"You. This. Whatever we were doing." Jess closes her eyes, like she can't bear to look directly at Rey. Her hands are limp and unresponsive in Rey’s, and it hurts, stings worse than anything Rey has known. “I’m a pilot. We’re disposable by job description. You’re too… bright, in my mind. I don’t want to try this dance and get nothing by the end. Do you understand?”

“Jess-”

“And I  _ can’t _ just be your friend, Rey. Not when you’re _ you _ . Don’t you understand how special you are? And I’m not just talking about the Jedi shit. You.”

“I don’t  _ want _ to just be your friend.” And it’s true, she realises. She knows friendship, the love that comes with it, the easy laughs and bright humour she shares and savours with Finn, with Rose, with Jannah and Chewie and Poe. There’s another type of line connecting her and Jess, another path, and it’s been fraying, worn down by unspoken resentments and misunderstandings. She wants to walk that path. She doesn’t want it to break. She breathes in, steps closer. 

“Rey-”

Jess’s mouth is warm, the softest thing she’s ever felt, and she makes a small exhalation of surprise before the other woman pulls her closer, kisses her deep, something flickering to life inside, something bright and precious. 


	4. deleted scene

For the first time in a while, Rey sits still, cross legged, and quiets her mind.

It works, and for a moment she’s floating in nothingness, in the blackness behind closed eyes. Then she pulls out, reaches out, and the jungle explodes in life around her, from the tiny creatures living in the undergrowth, to the faint signatures of the beings of the teeming base behind her. Further in, she feels the vibrant, pulsing beacon of Force that is Finn, and if she tries hard enough, she can feel Poe, and Jess, and everyone for miles and miles.

She rests in the flow of the Force, relishing in the glow of it, the life, until she remembers why she came, what she’s doing. She draws her mind back to the small clearing where she’s sitting, and narrows down her focus. She reaches. She calls.

_ Ben? _

For a moment, silence, and she thinks maybe she’s mistaken, until she feels the world bend, just a little, somewhere behind her. She keeps her eyes closed, her body still, but her hands go cold.

He says nothing, but she knows he’s there. She licks her lips, unsure of what to say, until the words form and come unbidden to the surface.

“You should have died screaming.” Words of hate, but her mind remains calm. It’s not hate. It’s just what needs to be said.

_ I know. _

“Thank you, for my life.” Another statement that needs to be spoken. Another stone dropped from the weight on her back. 

_ It was yours to take. I’m sorry for all that’s happened to you. _

“You still had me, you know that? Do you know about my dreams?” She’s fighting to stay calm now, and for a moment she thinks maybe he’s gone, but she feels him walk over, sit down in front of her. A sigh, from a dead man.

_ What I’ve done, who I am… it’s inexcusable. I can’t take back the things I’ve done. _

“I don’t want you to. It wouldn’t do anything now. I just want to move on.” She opens her eyes, and there he is, scarless, looking better than she’d ever seen him in life, shimmering blue just like his mother, just like Luke. Sudden fury rises in her chest, but she tamps it down.  _ Do you deserve this? Do you deserve to live on?  _

_ I don’t.  _ He looks pensive, and blinks, looks down. There’s shame in his face.  _ Good. _

“I’m trying to be happy. I’m in love. I’m training Finn in the Force. I’ll train any who want it. I’m doing what Master Skywalker started, but better, and when it’s done, you’ll be a cautionary tale, a villain in a history book. That’s your legacy to this galaxy. That’s all you’ll ever be.”

_ And what will I be to you? _

“A memory,” she whispers, and she feels it to be true. “A memory of a nightmare long over. Nothing more.”

He nods, looking resigned, and fades away.

Rey does not cry. She’s wasted enough tears on him. She stands, soaking in the warm, riotous pull and flow of life, growing and dying and living.

Jess is waiting for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wanted to fit this in between rey's realisation in the x-wing and the final scene with jess but it didn't feel right? and also just having him physically around is such a bummer to my brain. but i had it fully written out so i figured i might as well post it. there's a very short chapter after this and then this fic will be done!! thank you for hanging around if you're still here lmao


	5. chapter four

This is a dream.

Rey is sitting on the porch of her house on Yavin IV, watching the fireflies dance in the waning light, watching her children dance with them too. They’re not really hers, and when they go home to their parents in the village over the ridge for the night, their mothers and fathers and parents will tuck them into bed and they’ll dream of the undying Force and all its forms, good and bad. But she’s been teaching them for long enough that in a small way, in her heart, they are hers.

Generations of Force-users, placed into her hands and then let go, thousands of tiny stars wheeling around the galaxy. They are not Jedi, not in the way of old, and not all of them decide to set up schools of their own, like she has, or fight injustices the way Finn does. But still they wheel across the cosmos, and Rey can feel the world settling into balance, light and dark. With hope, it will stay that way for a long, long time. She and so many others had bled into the stars to make it so, generations of pain. She's hoping against hope for a bit of peace. Even just for a short while. She hopes that these children can grow up happy, with no dark shadows hovering over their lives. 

She thinks that Leia must be proud. 

Warm arms wrap around Rey’s shoulders, and lips press against her cheek. The beginnings of a laugh, the soft scent of the wildflowers filling her nose. All the living things, growing and green in the night.

“Pilot,” she mumbles, as Jess plants herself behind her, Rey leaning back in the vee of her legs. Jess, despite all her grumblings of being overworked, has never given up the skies and the silence of space. She teaches others to fly now. Sometimes Rey catches her looking up the dark, and it's a thing of beauty. Rey doesn't find the same comfort that her wife does in the stars, but she understands it. Jess cannot feel the Force, does not fathom the life that runs around and through them like a mountain stream through rock, but when she looks up, she is reminded of everyone else in the universe. They are silent for a moment, and Rey cranes her head back to look at her wife’s face. She's not looking at the stars this time, but her. The silver in Jess’s greying hair catches the moonlight, and Rey says nothing, transfixed.

“Jedi.” Jess kisses her on the forehead, and smiles that wry, crooked half-smile, all lips and no teeth. “I thought you could sense me coming.”

She could, and Rey knows a lot of other things too, now, with decades of studying the Force. She’s been watching the flow and ebb of the galaxy for a while now, and she knows so much, and yet doesn’t know even more. 

The unknown is still out there, a gaping void of time and space that Rey, even in her studies, will never even begin to understand. 

But she is no longer afraid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for taking the time to read this! i'm going to be honest and say that my interest in star wars has waned (the same can be said of my writing partner) so this might be the last star warsy content you get from either of us in a while. that being said, i'm working on some new stuff maybe for a new fandom. a movie came out on netflix called the old guard and i'm obsessed gfhjkl so i might be putting out stuff for that at some point. i highly recommend you watch it! two words- canon gays.  
> thank you again for reading this little used-to-be-a-oneshot-turned-something-bigger!! as always my tumblr is at @ssungods so you can catch me there. love ya! -joseph

**Author's Note:**

> ummm this is mostly all written out already so hold on? i dont know how many people r still into this ship but ive been sitting on this fic since like march this year so i figured i might as well get it over with also this whole fic is based on north by clairo so check that out ALSO my tumblr is @ssungods ok thnx byee - seph
> 
> EDIT: i am SO SORRY LMFAO i forgot about this in the middle of my exams but it's uhh pretty much done now i swear it


End file.
